Just A Little More Perfect
by WeAllLoveHiccup
Summary: Sequel to The Perfect Time For Rain. Recovery. (Noun.) The process of building pillow forts and falling off beds, of doctors, shrinks, competitive napping and fights in the kitchen. The action of learning money to spare and food without mould, plus the definitions of a Rolex and profiteroles; of social skills, the friendzone, the commodity of survival and most importantly: family.
1. Hiccup

**Here we are, back again. Little twoshot sequel for Christmas, catching up with the aftermath of The Perfect Time For Rain with a little bit of backstory and insight into the characters thrown in. Enjoy!**

Hiccup surveyed the green and red lights, the huge tree occupying one corner that somehow didn't look out of place and the shreds of tinsel in the carpet while snuggled up under his favourite blanket on his favourite armchair. That's right, his favourites. He had them! That alone meant far more to him than he could ever try to articulate, so he didn't.

Astrid and Fishlegs were fighting over something as usual, in the kitchen. Astrid had really come out of her shell, surpassing all of them in confidence and intelligence. She enraptured half the school, made loads of friends and joined so many clubs (all in phases). Truth be told, some of those phases were more definitely entertaining than others. Firstly, she got hardcore into running and won 59 races, then decided she should do a team sport. Naturally, she chose netball (which she raved about during dinner with her fork in her mouth) but she absolutely hated all the other people (Sorry, bloody fucking ignorant nitwits with no fucking spacial awareness) and complained about them endlessly until she hurt her hip in a collision (which only Astrid could manage to do during _netball_ ) and decided to do something more docile: play the clarinet. The neighbourhood was never the same again, to be sure. Some of the more... colourful letters hang proudly on the fridge. Her most recent additions to her quickly-growing repertoire have been numerous victories in the delicate art of competitive napping (which, despite being lectured enough on the intricacies of controlling ones breathing, he could still not master) and Latin dancing.

Fishlegs was her polar opposite, a quiet, well read boy who appeared rather good natured. He was, unless you got on his bad side. (One night, he had come home in such a fit of anger that Hiccup locked himself in the bathroom, panicked, climbed out the window and slept behind their local Tesco.) But that's beside the point, he had a temper. He and Snotlout had an interesting relationship in which they religiously denied any contact with the other at school, unless either one got hurt or picked on by another student. Then, they would take a bullet for each other. He got very big-brotherish around Hiccup, who didn't mind one bit (and they geeked out on stuff together, but that's very, very much beside the point). However, he had just never got on with Astrid, every single change either made setting the other off.

Their feud was, however, rather awkward for him as he always got stuck in the middle; he loved them both. Snotlout just didn't care enough to be bothered and Mrs Ingerman always patted them on the head and laughed it off as a 'normal part of growing up'. Often, though, it didn't feel like one.

It was far from normal, their little family. He had to look in mirrors and see his blasted _pretty_ green eyes staring back without hearing dirty, sneering voices pointing them out, scrub his hair while chanting to himself that it was _his_ hands tangled in it and see curling scars mocking him every time he undressed. The three of them were enrolled in Fishlegs' school, and despite the fact that he hadn't ever been to a secondary school, the work was manageable. Some parts, however, were an absolute nightmare. All the expectations, exams, male professors and the minds of teenage boys, but it was the _touching_ that had undone him. He was pulled out after losing so much weight from skipping meals due to stress that he had passed out and ended up in hospital for the third time in his life. Mrs Ingerman's hysterical sobs of how _she should have done better, should have noticed something and what kind of parent was she?_ tore through him like nothing else he had ever known. It was then, with warm, soft hands clutching desperately at his pale, cold one and fingers stroking his face like he was the most precious thing in the world, that he first came to the realisation that someone cared about him. Really cared. _I love you_ was meaningless to him, he had heard it too many times in the throes or passion, often accompanied by another persons name, and he had heard it through the red haze of white powder and golden liquid, accompanied by the much worse 'Valka, Val, Oh Val...' and so he had never really believed that anyone ever could really love him. The realisation that someone did was much like the feeling of his first hug, but much, much stronger.

He wasn't the only screwed up one though, which was kind of what made it work. Astrid still had full blown meltdowns whenever she got within 5 feet of anything that could potentially burn her, the first incident being when she had a friend over and they used almost every dish in the house to make some marshmallow concoction, causing Mrs Ingerman to have a fit and run boiling hot washing up water for her to clean the dishes. Astrid wouldn't go anywhere near it, which only angered Mrs Ingerman further. After what was probably the most intense staring competition that he swore made the walls vibrate, she had grabbed Astrid's wrist and pushed her towards the water, telling her to 'stop acting like a brat'. However, one fingertip in the water morphed Astrid into an apologetic, shuddering puddle on the floor. Snotlout still dragged him down the nearest alley every time he saw someone who remotely resembled anyone who looked like one of his previous... victims. He had the most violent nightmares of all of them, falling off his bed and sending things clattering down around him. However, he never made any more sound than a gasp. Neither of them did; noise was dangerous. Even Fishlegs had a breakdown after receiving a letter from his father, who left both of them when Fishlegs was five.

After seeing the bruises on Snot's back and legs, Hiccup offered to build him a pillow fort like his, but Snot said he liked having a bed as falling out of it was the quickest way to make him realise he wasn't there anymore as he had never had a tall bed frame then, only a mattress. He understood; they understood each other. That had become clearer and clearer and their relationship had improved dramatically, especially since the pillow fort.

Mrs Ingerman had given each of them a bedroom, and a bed. Hiccup had spent his nights on the couch or the floor, as he had never had a bed of his own and only spent time in his father's bed when he had... customers. Often then, he was tied to it. He couldn't even look at a bed without seeing dimmed lights; glinting, cold steel and raw, beige rope; flat, ripped grey sheets and slimy, crimson blood. Black, metal bars rising, consuming, up, up, up... He smelt fear and tasted salt, the sting of alcoholic breath and dark, dirty hands holding brilliant white powder that sparkled like the devils teeth. If he looked for long enough, brushed his hand against the innocuous wood of his new bed, it physically hurt. Pain swirling up from his gut, constricting his breath, squeezing so hard it crushed his ribs, hungrily clawed at his heart and frantically wringing out the last malleable part of him. This went on for a while- he didn't want to bother Mrs Ingerman as she was being so kind to him- until one night, after a nightmare, Snotlout came downstairs and shook him awake. He stared at him with searching grey eyes for so long that Hiccup was almost scared, then grabbed his wrist and led him upstairs. Neither of them spoke, not once. They didn't need to. Snotlout couldn't get the bed out the door, so he took it apart, bolt by bolt, barely making a sound. Then they took it to this fenced off part at the back of a public park, and burnt it. They hugged the whole time, watching it disintegrate. Like, properly hugged. That had only happened twice in his short life and one of those times, Snotlout was asleep. Then, they took every available pillow and blanket in the house (and stole a few too, sorry Tesco. Wrong place, wrong time) and arranged a stupidly comfortable pile. After that, Snotlout went back to his room. To this day, they have never spoken about it. Again, they didn't need to.

They had scars, all three of them. He had osteoporosis (yet another wonderful symptom! Chronic malnutrition: the gift that keeps on giving!) , Snotlout had liver damage and Astrid had irreparable muscle damage from her deep, untreated burns. All of them saw shrinks who, despite how much they all bitched about them, were actually kind of helpful. He had used the grounding thing an embarrassing amount of times and some of her phrases refused to go away; she made him _talk_ and listened to him like the stubby, awkward, broken sentences he stumbled over were the most eloquent words she had ever heard. Though he would never admit it. Ever. (Sorry again, Lisa.) The scars didn't magically go away, their wounds didn't heal at the drop of a hat. The power they had over them just became a little less potent and a little more manageable.

He had never felt further away from the skeletal ghost that lived in a forgotten corner of a famous house; famous not among society, but the rats that gnawed at the bottom of it; than when curled up with the steam of hot drinks drifting up between him and a blaring television, feeling so very _warm_. And he could definitely not mistake himself for dirty little scum when he was pulled against a soft body smelling of cinnamon, embers of the fire and _home_. It was almost like a movie, curled up with his family in a warmly lit room filled with Christmas decorations and laughter. As he lent against the gentle hand carding through his hair, trusting it to stay there, he giggled at the thought that the only other thing missing than a camera zooming out from their living room to the snow outside, was a great, howling blizzard outside and some crappy synthetic Christmas tune.. hmm yeah.. roll credits.

 **There. Drop me a review, I love to hear from you! Snotlout's part posted tomorrow.**


	2. Snotlout

***wistful sigh* I've missed writing for this AU. Chapter a-la Snotlout for y'all.**

Snotlout sighed as he shucked his bag and sunk into the worn, brown leather sofa. Their garish Christmas decorations had started to come apart, as he'd told the four eager Christmas fanatics that lived with him they would, but as usual, he was ignored. He cast his eyes over to the navy blanket with a tuft of auburn hair sticking out that was vaguely shaped like his cousin. A slight glow emitted from the centre.

"You're not fooling anyone, Hic. We know you're on your phone."

The blanked squirmed a bit and mumbled something before humming and one socked foot appeared before disappearing again. Snotlout smiled. He'd been doing that a lot lately. As cliche as it is, he had never been happier. Honestly!

School was... interesting. He'd never really bothered with it before, boring teachers and boring subjects, half the time he didn't know or care whether he was in maths or history or something in between. He was also pretty sure that he had skived more secondary school than he had attended. Well, that was until Mrs Ingerman.

She was a no-nonsense kind of woman, but she was far from intimidating. She wasn't strict or mean, the woman baked cookies in heart shapes and had her own bloody advent calendar for goodness sake! Even so, she had this inexplicable power to make you _want_ to comply with her. On the surface, she seemed rather ditsy, girly and giggly but it soon became clear that her fluffy, wispy exterior was build on rock solid foundations.

So, he attended school and didn't do too bad, really! It was hard connecting with other boys his age though, listening to them talk about rugby and watches and 'doesn't Holly look hot today?' when all he could think of was _how bloody trivial. In what universe is any of this important? You wouldn't survive a day on the streets, pussies. Bet you're all blushing virgins who've never seen a drug or a real knife before. Don't get me started on guns. Oh, nice trainers, Tom._ Which was one reason why his relationship with Hiccup had improved dramatically.

He had spent his entire life thinking they were polar opposites, but being thrusted into the normal world had shown him just how frighteningly alike they really were. At first he hadn't liked it at all, (go away, useless) but as he integrated more into the world (hey, guess who's going to Tenerife?) he realised that Hiccup may be the only one (spoilt brats, aren't they?) who truly understood him (yeah, they're weak.). Hiccup knew what it was like to wake up in a cold sweat three times in one night, to see members of your family distorted into frightening monsters and have kinship by blood to be a foreign entity, something always just out of reach. Family brought pain, a pain more potent than the rest. He was weaned from that rule. Hiccup knew fighting for your life as a daily ritual, and saw breathing as an accomplishment, a gift, not a commodity to be taken for granted. They don't know how much they take for granted. Hiccup knew mouldy food and rotting teeth set into scarred faces with quick, dark, evil eyes. Eyes that would swallow you up and place you gently into a roaring inferno of a cold, blank stare and pain that screams too loudly to be heard. But of course, he must forget all that and pretend to be normal, pretend like he's totally played 'games' before (normal, innocent games, not a euphemism for something much darker) he absolutely knew what a Rolex was and weren't profiteroles great?

He could only pretend for so long, that he knew money to spare and he took staple foods for granted, that this was his world and he didn't feel alarmingly naive in this foreign place. He could cover his fluttering insecurities and cover over the fact that he longed for nothing more than comforting dark clothes and feared alleyways, for the cold, reassuring weight of a silver blade or a silver bullet and he could barely quell the urge to run and hide someplace familiarly dark, where he knew he was at the top.

He could kill a man in two seconds flat, get in a fatal hit from twenty meters away and survive fourteen years in his raw, rough, dirty world but he felt like nothing more than a stumbling, sprawling baby taking his first steps in this world. This world of new clothes and new money, of holidays and sugar, of laughter and smiles. It was a fragile world, he soon realised, with a sparkling front to cover over a dusty web of insecurities, inadequacies and failings. It was one that must be trodden lightly, and one that he had squashed with a heavy, clumsy boot more than once. There was a whole network sewn with fine lace of social intricacies, all based around emotions.

They ranged from the friendzone (wtf? Just fuck already) to liking posts on social media ('oh, so he's going out with you but he liked Stacie's post? That slut. He's toats cheating on you hon') to what music you like (fucking emo) to 'I'm fine' (a bloody minefield) and everything inbetween. It was a little worse now Hiccup wasn't there, him having been pulled out after he nearly starved himself to _fucking_ death (while adamantly insisting that he was fine, thank you very much and drilling that damned smile on his face) and so he was pretty much alone. He had learned quickly that Fishlegs wasn't considered 'cool' and if he went within a five mile radius of Astrid people would start wolf-whistling. Hiccup had been benign enough - if a little odd - and the girls had thought he was cute.

He had discovered a new favourite pastime though, the first being to say iffy things to innocent people and see how much would go right over their heads, the second being to say downright hardcore things to innocent people and watch them squirm. (Although admittedly, Hiccup was better at the sex ones than he was.) They had made bets on who could get the funniest reactions, one of which had ended in him having to eat a sandwich covered in a mixture of food colourings to make it look mouldy infront of everyone. Well, the reactions were funny, to say the least.

Having spare time (another foreign concept) had given him a lot of time to think, which he was doubtful was a good thing. He had pondered on the fragility of human mortality, which he had seen firsthand, and how it had become a taboo subject within the society he suddenly inhabited. He hadn't had much time to develop anything akin to social skills, his only interactions with girls having been 'a little to the left', 'harder right there' or 'are you sitting on my bra?' And for males it was mainly fragmented conversations consisting of euphemisms for drugs, threats and murder, none of which were understandable to a normal person and so none of which prepared him for this kind of life. Even with Hiccup, any semblance of conversation had mainly been insults or requests for bandages and his father just barked orders to which he said 'Yes, Sir.' Therefore, he had nothing to say most of the time and most of the things 'on his mind' were incredibly dark and crass. So, he had developed a reputation (of which he was unaware until recently) of being quiet, brooding and mysterious. He didn't like this at all, but the female population seemed to, so he let it be. He had nothing to say anyway. The flip side of that, however, meant the he had no real close friends (friendship: the next instalment in the bestselling Alien Concepts series) and just tagged along with a generic group of Jocks.

He didn't even have much interaction with Astrid, who lived with him! She hung around Hiccup (and fucking adored him) and fought with Fishlegs all the time, mostly over annoying and petty things. Fishlegs was still yet to 'win' an argument with her despite most of them taking place in the kitchen, around hot things. At first, he hadn't questioned Astrid's morbid fear of heat (not summer, just hot objects) and her sudden, out of character jumpiness around anything steaming. Then again, he hadn't noticed the horrible bags under Hiccup's eyes for like, a month until the pillow fort incident, which neither of them had ever wanted or needed to mention again. However, after a big, dramatic fight that Astrid and Fishlegs had (that he just _had_ to have been present for) he realised that maybe, her fear was something more.

He pondered for (embarrassingly) the first time why Astrid was in the hospital in the first place, with apparent street smarts and an attitude that mirrored his and Hiccup's almost alarmingly. However, she was a strong character and would never be pegged as the 'victim' type, plus she had slotted seamlessly into their lives so well that she may as well have been there all along. Therefore, he had never really wondered why a stray girl in a hospital would just up and join two random boys on a rather spontaneous and very probably unsuccessful journey to escape foster care without a second thought for any family or life she left behind. That was until Hiccup had sat down with him and casually discussed why her injuries only seemed to be burns and why whoever it was chose to use (and leave it at) burning. He spoke like it was old news that Astrid was well, you know... the 'a' word (that all three of them were proper fucking cowards around and would never say) and made him feel incredibly out of the loop.

She had finally opened up about it, on Fishlegs' fifteenth birthday when they were all more than a little tipsy and in various positions on the floor of the living room. Fishlegs had started talking about his father, so Hiccup said a little bit about his while he downed the rest of the vodka, after which he said a little about his. (Hiccup miraculously 'found' some more alcohol from _unknown_ _sources_ after that.) Finally, when they were all sufficiently intoxicated, Astrid spoke about her controlling, burly aunt who was a glass-blower. She said she was worse around hot liquids and metals, but fine with most other things. Suddenly, her intense dislike of electronics class made sense... They had all moped about the next day with killer hangovers and boxes of chocolates from various relatives of Fishlegs, but the overwhelming silence was companionable and they all felt just a little closer than before. (Don't worry though, the next day Astrid and Fishlegs were merrily fighting over sofa, carpet and lamp positions and opinions on the colour orange with renewed vigour.)

A familiar screech signalled the return of Mrs Ingerman (love the woman, but for your own safety, please never get in a car with her) and the loosely Hiccup shaped blanket shifted slightly. The idea of safety had been another strange concept, of taking survival as a commodity and feeling relatively happy that mortality was not imminent, and could be pushed to the back of his mind. He was learning, however, to trust that he could expect many, many days of sitting in his favourite spot on the dark brown sofa (with no rips in!) opposite Hiccup's armchair next to Mrs Ingerman's. That the people he was slowly beginning to love would be around for more that just a fleeting moment. Slowly, slowly he was beginning to set his feet on the shaky ground beneath him, and trust it not to fall.

So he sat there, in a cliched firelit room with Christmas lights of red and green glowing all around him, contemplating life and safety and how if this was just a little more perfect, it would make a great novel.

Or maybe even a movie.

 **My friend wrote a poem for me a while back and it was so lovely! (It didn't make me cry, nope) So, I thought it may fit in here? Anyway, have a poem.**

 ***chucks poem at audience***

 _You may think recovery is_

 _Broken children being loved_

 _Skinny children filling out_

 _Bruises healing, scars fading._

 _But it's so much more than that._

 _Recovery is_

 _Demons fought at 3am_

 _Silent nightmares suffered alone_

 _The conscious decision not to flinch_

 _And the guilt at the apologies that follow_

 _Always scared of touching this, drinking that_

 _Saying those words that always set him off._

 _Shadows, eyes._

 _Recovery is_

 _Shaking in bed waiting for the hurt that never comes_

 _Heightened nerves, the fear of painlessness_

 _School._

 _The touching, bumping shoulders._

 _Boys slamming your book down on the table and_

 _something dark shattering behind your eyes_

 _The jokes, the words._

 _The feeling that there's nowhere to go._

 _Trapped._

 _Cornered._

 _Recovery is_

 _The strangely shaped scars that have come to mean something_

 _The marks lining your skin in places you're sure that_

 _No normal person would ever have_

 _Your own body a constant reminder_

 _Working against you ever_

 _Feeling ok._

 _Looking in the mirror and getting transported back_

 _To dark, red, broken, ugly._

 _Recovery is_

 _Small rewards for small victories_

 _Finding that food you could eat forever_

 _Little pleasures that make life worth living_

 _And soft, warm hands that touch yours._

 _Recovery is not easy._

 _Far from it._

 _But it is worth it_

 _For just one of your smiles._

 **Little funny story: upon showing this to me, she employed some of the Oh-so sophisticated techniques we learnt during poetry in year 9 English, such as if you turn it to the side, the irregular structure shows the ups and downs in the battle of recovery (she couldn't be arsed to give it a proper poem structure) and the irregular, chaotic mix of proper sentences, phrases and single words show that 'recovery' isn't final, and your state can still degenerate (she couldn't be arsed to format it at all). I definitely think she has a future career as an English teacher ( I swear you could give them a dash and they'd analyse it in depth, something like 'the writer uses a straight line here to represent the linear structure of society')**

 **Anyway, goodnight. Leave me a review, I hope that this was sequel-y enough! (Any comments about the poem will be appreciated and passed on.)**


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